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Thursday, March 26, 2015

Former Cardinals outfielder Curt Ford said Thursday he may move away from the St. Louis area in disgust after being punched in an allegedly unprovoked, race-related attack at a gas station.

“I’m going to let the authorities handle this situation, but I’ve had enough of St. Louis,” Ford said in a phone interview Thursday. “You hear about this kind of stuff happening, and I always knew it existed because of my previous experience working here in St. Louis, but you try to ...

The woman in her 30s sued the team, Sapporo Dome Co. and Sapporo city for their failure to prevent her from being hit by the foul ball, which resulted in her losing sight in her right eye, while she was in the infield stands during a game at Sapporo Dome in Hokkaido on Aug. 21, 2010.

I feel like there’s a tasteless joke somewhere in here about how ham is a poor substitute for steak in preventing black eyes, but please don’t be tempted to make it. Instead discuss whether this establishes any ...

I can’t listen to Felger and Massarotti on the radio. They are the two biggest, factless blowhards on Boston sports radio. When faced with undeniable facts which refute whichever crazy premise they have expressed, the words “I was wrong” have never been expressed.

Felger added: “He’s backtracking today. That’s what I think. That’s my opinion. But it’s only an opinion.”
Mazz said, “I don’t know that he’s backtracking. I think he realizes he said too much. That’s what I ...

Welcome to Grantland’s 2015 MLB division previews. From now through next week, Jonah Keri and I will analyze each team in each division, focusing on offseason triumphs and failures, roster strengths and weaknesses, telling projections, revealing stats, and off-field story lines, and wrapping up with our over/under verdicts on each team’s projected record. As always, all overly pessimistic opinions should be blamed on the well-known grudge we bear your team, and only your team, because of ...

In today’s Pipeline Perspectives, Jonathan and I debate which farm system has been the most productive since the end of the 2009 season. My choice was the Nationals, who have developed three budding superstars in Stephen Strasburg, Bryce Harper and Anthony Rendon, two more All-Stars in Ian Desmond and Derek Norris, plus a bunch of complementary players and trade fodder….

4. Royals
Kansas City nearly rode its system to a World Series championship last year, building the second-most ...

Hey Bill, on the Tommy John surgery boom, a couple of questions: 1) I’m pretty sure you’ve answered this in detail before, but is the proliferation mostly the result of Little League and high school kids throwing curveballs long before they should? And/or: 2) Were there a larger number of early-career burnouts before Tommy John? When I was in Little League (early ‘60s), our best pitcher threw a nasty curve. We dominated the league when he pitched, ...

March 26, 1915, American pilot Phil Rader, fighting for the French in World War I, writes for United Press:

What Christy Mathewson could do to the Germans near our trenches!

The Germans are masters of new tricks, or of adapring old tricks to new purposes, but their hand-grenade stunt would put them at the mercy of the great American ball players.
...
I used to watch the Germans toss these bombs like schoolgirls or like boys pitching nickels at a crack…Eugene Jacobs, the man who left his butcher ...

Rob Thomson, the Yankees’ bench coach, said that Gregorius “really gets off the ball,” meaning that he excels at reading bat angles and hops. Thomson also praised Gregorius’ “quiet glove action,” noting that while some infielders will flip their gloves downward to make a play, Gregorius carries his glove outside his left knee and smoothly positions it in the spot where the ball arrives, almost as if he is laying it down gently.

I’ve watched Baez quite a bit. He’s not ready at the plate. He seems compelled to flail at every breaking pitch away that gets served to him. From Maddon’s comment it also seems he’s not really taking to his coaching and might need to be humbled a bit more.

Maddon denied a report that Baez was on the final 25-man roster, and added that neither Cubs president of baseball operations Theo Epstein or general manager Jed Hoyer gave the infieder the go-ahead either.

It was the kind of power-speed combo that intrigues and enthuses the Mets about having Lagares bat first. Later in the game, he hit a two-run homer off Dellin Betances and Lagares is batting .395 this spring.

Yet, the Mets are toying with having him — wait for it — hit last.

Manager Terry Collins told me that as early as Friday against the Cardinals — when Curtis Granderson and David Wright return to the lineup — the Mets might experiment once again with the pitcher hitting eighth.

the Twins are giving away possibly the best bobblehead introduced thus far this season. The bobblehead will feature pitcher Phil Hughes dressed in jedi robes and holding a green lightsaber. The best part of the whole thing is that the team is using the hashtag #HughesTheForce to promote the event.

Pablo Sandoval’s departure from the San Francisco Giants continues to get ugly. Sandoval has already made waves this spring, saying he felt disrespected by his former club, and never intended to re-sign with them. Well, he’s doubled down on those comments, telling USA Today’s Jorge L. Ortiz that he changed his cell phone number and doesn’t really communicate with his old teammates. He also revealed that the team’s insistence that he remain on a weight regimen was one of the reasons he decided ...

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Montero officially remains in a competition with Dillon Gee for the fifth starter’s job. However, Mets officials acknowledge Gee is highly likely to get the rotation nod, and Montero likely is ticketed for relief at the major league level to begin the season.

Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Andrew McCutchen is a four-time All-Star, National League MVP, Golden Glove winner, and a three-time winner of the Silver Slugger Award. He also led the Pirates to their first winning season in 1992.

Despite all of these notable achievements, McCutchen is most famous for being the guy wit the hair. “It’s good to have an image,” McCutchen said of that hair to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review back in 2014. “I have the hair, but eventually ...

I know this play has been beaten to death, but Kurkjian does a nice job breaking the play down and getting quotes from all the players involved.

Juan Perez: “When I got to the ball, I tried to pick it up with my bare hand instead of using my glove. That was another mistake. Then I kind of kicked the ball and I thought, ‘Oh my God, he might score!’ I wasn’t sure how fast he really was, and I thought there was a chance he would score.”

If Major League Baseball traded on a stock exchange it would be worth $36 billion. The average baseball team TISI +0.62% is now worth $1.2 billion, 48% more than a year ago, the biggest year-over-year increase since we began tracking team values in 1998. A record 15 MLB teams are now worth at least $1 billion, up from five in 2014.

The New York Yankees are worth the most, $3.2 billion, and are tied with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys as the most valuable U.S. sports teams ...

Santana’s actual production on each BIP type is indicated in the AVG and SLG columns, and it’s converted to run values and compared to MLB average in the REL PRD column. That figure then is adjusted for context, such as home park, luck, etc., in the ADJ PRD column. For the purposes of this exercise, SH and SF are included as outs and HBP are excluded from the OBP calculation.

More abstruse analysis of stats nobody has ever adequately explained from the #6 numbers guy in baseball.

Cosart’s troubles started last night with a gambling expert on Twitter alleging he’d direct messaged a colleague asking for betting advice. Cosart later deleted his own account as tweets piled up accusing him of gambling and speculating whether he’d ever bet on baseball, which would be a serious violation of the game’s rules.

Before jumping into the tale, it’s worth noting: The entire firestorm stems from essentially anonymous Tweets from ...

With 16 innings under his belt in the 2015 Grapefruit League, Buchanan is sporting a 1.69 ERA with a 0.75 WHIP and 11 strikeouts. But perhaps his most impressive statistical feat is this: the next walk he surrenders will be his first of the season. We preach loudly and often here at Crashburn about the irrelevance of spring training stat lines for perfectly valid reasons ranging from inconsistent quality of competition to extraordinarily small sample sizes to the emphasis on season preparation ...

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Thank goodness for the Milwaukee Brewers, who are set to unleash two new food items this season. First up, it’s the ‘Down Wisconsin Avenue’ Brat. This brat has everything: fries, gravy, cheese curds and sauerkraut are placed on the dog. That gets covered with cheese sauce, fried jalapenos, sour cream and chives.

On top of that, the club has also announced the ‘Inside the Park Nachos.’ These are not your typical nachos. Nachos are great, but they are a difficult item to eat on the go. And, if ...

The replica ring is a staple ballpark giveaway these days, one that fans will line up hours to get. We’ve seen plenty of teams giving away recent World Series replica rings, even World Series replica rings from 50 years ago. But we’ve never seen a future World Series ring.